Jim Cox Report: August 2004

Dear Publisher Folk, Friends & Family:

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There's a lot of news, office gossip, and "tips, tricks & techniques" to share with you this time
around so let's get started!

1. I was a guest on a radio show called "The Small Press Center" on Wednesday morning, July
14th. It was hosted by Antoinette Kuritz. There were two other guests on the show -- a small
press publisher and the head of a book publicity firm. As it turned out, both the publisher and the
publicist had sent many a book to the Midwest Book Review, were well aware of who I was, and
turned the show into a meeting of the Jim Cox fan club for a couple of minutes! I pretty much
talked briefly to the basics of what the Midwest Book Review does, along with the fundamentals
of the book review process. It was a lot of fun!

2. Our webmaster has been very busy (and frustrated) this past month. It seems that Amazon.com
has changed their review posting software. Their intent was better service. But alas, that old
adage about good intentions going astray has come home to roost on their cyberspace website
with a vengeance. It now seems that their brand new software will no longer permit us to make a
correction to a previously posted review. It once was so easy!. Just correct the typo on the
review, then simply re-post it. -- No longer. If you try now you get a form letter email response
saying you can't.

I represent the Midwest Book Review. We post many reviews upon Amazon.com. Sometimes a
review contains typos which need to be fixed.

Your recent site revamp has removed the edit button from our reviews. We can no longer fix
review typos. The edit button exists in the "see all your reviews" section, but that is useless
because I can see no way to locate a specific review in that section out of the thousands of
reviews we send to Amazon.com. Please fix this so that we can quickly look up a book by its
title/ISBN number and edit our reviews once more, or tell us how to work around this bug.

And when our webmaster lodged the above complaint about this new snafu, she got a form letter
email response thanking her for taking an interest in Amazon.com -- but no action. This is the
Amazon reply:

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com with your comments about our recent changes to the
review features.

These recent changes included changes in how we maintain our review database which will allow
for more immediate processing of review and review edit submissions. Unfortunately, due to these
changes, we are no longer able to offer the edit review function on a product's detail page. I
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

I will, however, be sure to pass your message on to the appropriate department in our company
for consideration. Customer feedback like yours is very important in helping us continue to
improve the selection and service we provide.

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please use
the appropriate link above if you need to contact us again about this matter.

Best regards,

Joshua S. Amazon.com
Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com

We will see how things work out in the long run. Surely I cannot be the only one whose reviews
occasionally suffer from an inadvertent typo! The moral of this little story seems to be that not all
software upgrades are actual improvements!

3. This past month I received two phone calls. One from the publicist at Cornell Maritime Press
and the other from the publicist at John Wiley & Sons. Both were calls prompted by someone
approaching them, identifying themselves as being reviewers for the Midwest Book Review, and
requesting review copies.

The problem was that I had never heard of either the woman (Cornell Maritime Press) or the man
(John Wiley & Sons) who made the requests. To compound things even further, the guy is
reported to having become quite belligerent and verbally abusive on the phone when he was
turned down.

Both publicists did exactly the right thing. They were approached by people they had never heard
of and proceeded to call me to check them out.

There is a never ending supply of scam artists seeking to fleece publishers out of free books
(which they will then turn around and sell for whatever they can get). The newest wrinkle in this
con game which is as nearly as old as the Gutenberg Press, is to represent themselves as being
associated with established and reputable book review publications and organizations like the
Midwest Book Review.

So if you are ever approached with a review copy solicitation from someone you do not know --
check them out! If they say they are from the Midwest Book Review, call or email me and I'll be
able to either verify that they are one of our authorized reviewers or just some scam artist
practicing their illicit craft.

If you've already been so approached, please let me know. I've got this chilling mental image of a
couple of con artists going down some publisher reference book and making "cold call contacts"
on the assumption that by trading on the reputation of the Midwest Book Review, their requests
will succeed in going unvetted, untested, and unchecked.

4. It seems that in May, the Midwest Book Review got written up in still another publication. This
came in:

Subj: Your are Featured in May Newsletter
From: newsdesk@u-publish.com
To: mbr@execpc.com, mwbookrevw@aol.com

Dear Colleague,

Please see below. You (or your company) will be featured in the following bulletin for hundreds
of authors and publishers, due out soon.

We hope you will benefit from the added exposure. Please con- sider adding a link to our site (
http://www.u-publish.com ) from your own, and please tell your constituents about the newsletter
copied below, which is free upon request to anyone in the book world.

Thanks for your time and consideration, and please keep in touch!

Kind regards,

Dan Snow
Co-Author/Publisher
U-Publish.com

I operate on the general assumption that it is usually a good thing for an author, a publisher, (or in
this case the Midwest Book Review) to have their websites linked to as many other websites on
the internet as possible. It increases the likelihood of someone discovering you who would
otherwise never know you (or your website) existed. And one sure way to get your website linked
to others is to have a section on your own website devoted to links to other thematically
appropriate websites.

5. Our webmaster now has all of our August online book review magazines up on our Midwest
Book Review website. Tonight's chores will focus her attention on uploading 128 new resource
links onto our website. These are links to online resources that will prove of particular interest to
readers, writers, publishers, and librarians. Including 11 new links to "Other Reviewers"; 16 new
links for "Book Lover Resources"; 7 new links for "Writer Resources"; 5 new links for "Publisher
Resources"; and even more publisher website, author website, and on-line bookstore website
links.

Once those links are uploaded, our webmaster will then turn her attention to adding three more
"how to" articles to our Midwest Book Review website's "Advice for Publishers" section:

Marilyn LaCourt's "It Takes a Team of Davids to Persuade Goliath to Change His Ways"; Laura
Bell's "Getting Your Name In Print"; and Al Canton's "Coming to a Business Like Yours:
Webware!"

And now onto to the "tips, tricks & techniques" portion of our program!

1. I'll use this email to illustrate a bit of advice:

Subj: Request for book blurb

Dear James,

I got your message through my wife Nancy that you will review The Parthenon Code after we
send you the finished books. You wrote this about my book Athena and Eden:

I ask if you will allow me to put that quote on the book jacket of The Parthenon Code. This book
is a combination and culmination of my first two books. The essence of Athena and Eden appears
in The Parthenon Code, with much improved graphics, so the quote is certainly true.

May I please? -- Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. (bob)

If a review was generated by a complimentary copy supplied to the reviewer by the publisher, the
publisher has the right to utilize the resultant review in any manner the publisher deems useful --
providing that publisher gives an identifying credit citation identifying the reviewer or review
source. You don't need to ask formal permission to do so. This is the publishing industry
normative standard.

Having said that, it is ever so nice and politic to make a request of the reviewer for permission to
use the review. This is because: 1) it's a courteous thing to do in polite society; 2) you are nicely
setting up that reviewer to give you consideration (and maybe an competitive edge) the next time
you have a book that you'd like that reviewer to consider; and 3) even with respect to it being a
"publishing industry normative standard", a permission sign off is still a very nice thing to have on
file.

With respect to Bob and his request, I whipped off a little email reply granting him full permission
to use our review anyway he wanted. It is the formal policy of the Midwest Book Review to
always grant such permissions to authors and publishers.

2. A snail-mail letter came in from Tom Peric of Galileo Communications. I'm going to reproduce
it here to illustrate another bit of "how to" advice:

Dear Jim:

I thoroughly enjoyed your "Pitching By Phone" tips in a back issue of SPAN. Joe Sabah sent me a
back issue and I found your article to be one of the most clear-headed descriptions of how to
pitch by phone that I've ever read.

Then I went to your web site and read all your articles about how the review system works,
"stamping" copy reviews, and a few other topics. You're a very clear writer and it's wonderful to
have someone put things down in a lucid, orderly fashion for us neophytes. The position of the
stamp (or not using one) was an issue to which I never gave much thought until your articles. (I'm
now going to stamp "Review Copy" on the bottom of my books.)

I'm a small publisher and a member of PMA. I've written "Wacky Days: How to Get Millions of
$$$ in Free Publicity by Creating a "Real" Holiday & Other Tactics Used by Media Experts".

I hope you find it an interesting read. I've picked two random chapters that you might find
interesting (the stickies), but naturally it's all your call.

Regardless of what you do (or don't) with my book, Keep up the marvelous work.

I post this as a perfect example of a cover letter. It arrived with a review copy of Tom's Book. It
succeeded in "personalizing" the cover letter, was completely non-aggressive in tone, and
flattering to the recipient's ego.

It also resulted in my personally accepting the review submission and resulted in a review of
"Wacky Days" which, fortunately, turned out to be a very good and recommendable title. While
addressed to entrepreneurs and businessmen in general, it was also very germane to book
publishing as marketing enterprise as well.

The function of a Publicity Release (also called a News Release and/or Press Release) is to
provide succinct descriptive information about the book.

The function of a Cover Letter is to provide succinct descriptive information as to why the book
is being submitted to that particular reviewer or review resource.

The other reason for showing you Tom's letter is to underscore the value of those various and
diverse "how to" articles archived in the "Advice for Publishers" section of the Midwest Book
Review website -- including the one on "Pitching By Phone" which was picked up by the SPAN
newsletter.

Now let's turn our attention to that part of the show I call "Unsolicited Testimonials & Postage
Stamp Roster of Fame and Appreciation"

Subj: thank you
From: SandyJostPhD@onehealthpublishing.com

Dear James Cox,

I am amazed at just how thorough you are in your reviews. A person can tell from your words
that you do delve deeply into these publications in order to formulate your opinions. Thank you
for all that you do to get the word out to the world about our smaller press publications. It's been
an honor to be reviewed by someone as well-read as you, knowing it is being placed into the
quality circulation of MBR, which has truly claimed a notoriety and a respect that is all its
own.

You are one of the most conscientious reviewers when it comes to sending tear sheets. That's a
big help. We are receiving some finished copies now, so you'll receive them soon. Many, many
thanks for all that you do.

Well, what can I say and still pretend to be modest? Ah -- I've got the perfect response:

Sandy, Ted, and the dozens and dozens of other authors and publishers who sent thank you notes
via email, snail-mail and postcards -- you are quite welcome. And thank you for your very kind
words. Every time one of these little "thank you" communiques come in, it just makes my whole
and complete day.

And then there are the even more tangible "thank you" expressions represented by the donations
of postage stamps in appreciation and support of what we here at the Midwest Book Review try
to accomplish in behalf of the small press community, day after day, week after week, month after
month, year after year, and now decade after decade.

Here are the latest wonderful folk who donated postage stamps "for the cause":

I also received two rolls of stamps through the "Stamps by Mail" program of the United States
Postal Service out of the USPS downtown station in Denver, Colorado. They arrived in a little
USPS mailer -- but with no identifying information as to who the author and/or publisher was that
sent them. So here's a big time thank you to whoever you are -- your stamps (as will all the other
contributions) will be put to very good use sending out the tear sheets and publisher notification
letters for the reviews in the August issues of our book review publications.

We don't permit people to donate money -- this is in order to avoid any conflict of interest issues.
But we do permit authors, publishers, publicists, readers, or anyone else to donate postage stamps
as a way of expressing their appreciation for the long hours and hard work that go into what the
Midwest Book Review is all about.

If you've got a book to be reviewed or postage stamps to be donated, send them to the attention
of:

To access our website and its treasure trove of links, resources, and "how to" articles for writers
and publishers, go to www.midwestbookreview.com

To receive the "Jim Cox Report" and/or any of our online book review magazines for free, just
send me your email address and tell me what you'd like to be signed up for -- it's all free of charge
(as is everything else we do around here).